Hannibal Makes Me Feel Like I’m Losing My Mind, and I Love It

I remember visiting the MoMA when I was a kid and being really stricken with a certain painting. I honestly can’t remember the name of the piece or even who painted it but I can tell you that for 25 to 30 seconds my visual senses fell prey to something I can describe only as “the void”. It had bleak tone and was almost three-dimensional in the way I sank into its complexities. There was nothing implicitly disturbing about it- no violence or gratuity, but there was something about the way the lines and colors came together that was very moving to me. Everything else around me dulled: the fluorescent lights dimmed, the packed museum suddenly became very quiet, and all that was left was me staring into the fine details of this picture, at the hardened peaks of paint that all came together to create this deeply disturbing piece of art. I think I was expecting it to move or come alive, nothing inanimate could be that complex. The second I looked away everything returned back to normal, the lights came on, the voices returned…I felt as if I had just escaped a black hole. I was left with only the memory of how disturbed and confused I had felt just a few seconds earlier. After a few seconds peace to really try to figure out what had just happened to me, I had made up my mind: I needed to do that again. And I did, three or four times before we left that room of the installation and then did it once more before we left for the day. I was hypnotized by the anxiety it was giving me, an inherently negative emotion but I could still just not look away. It was just so exhilarating to ride such a wave of intense emotion and introspection. It was showing me something in myself that was dangerous, twisted and simply reeked of madness. Twenty years later I have a similar experience with another piece of art, this one is called Hannibal and it returns tonight on NBC.

There is an eerie hum that echoes through the background of your television set as you watch any given episode of Hannibal. It occurs at seemingly unimportant times and is very well mixed into the rest of the show’s score, causing it to become more of a subliminal sound effect. The Doctor Who revival series did something very similar, mixing the sound of an school/fire bell ringing loudly to subliminally create feelings of urgency in its audience and that time would soon be running out for our heroes. When Hannibal does this instead of producing feelings of urgency, this eerie hum (that I can only describe as a hard gust of wind blowing through a hollow piece of rotten wood) causes feelings of uneasiness. Its foreboding sound reminds us that nothing is as it seems and that around any corner, a nightmare could be lurking. This sound is perfectly indicative of the rest of this show; from its blood-chilling atmosphere to its unique and often times befuddling point of view.

Hannibal is presented to us through the eyes of series protagonist, Will Graham. He’s a consultant for the FBI; who has the tough task of catching the most violent criminals in the country. He does this very successfully thanks to a frightening ability that allows him to completely immerse himself in the minds of these violent criminals, which then enables him to determine their next steps. That much power comes with a price however- a problem that causes Dr. Hannibal Lector (who serves as Will’s mentor, guide and therapist) to warn him: when you immerse yourself in such a pure darkness, it is inevitable that when you get back out, some of that darkness is going to stick to you. After a traumatic incident in the first episode Will’s mind begins to slowly believe what Hannibal has implied. What follows is a narrator that is as unsure of his self as he is of the reality he exists in. His intensely lucid dreaming blurs the very important line between the real world and Will’s darkest nightmares, which leaves us, the audience seeing the world through his eyes, experiencing the same confusion and loss of identify. You lose faith in him as a reliable narrator after only three or four episodes, and are then left with the same sense of abandon and loss of structure that he is experiencing. Will can wake up from his nightmares but still finds no relief. Just when this show has lured you into a sense of safety and peace, the dark hum plays and soon something upsetting and dark has just flashed before your eyes. These moments serve as a perfect allusion to the show- not only has the dream world and the real world become so blurred in both aesthetic and feel that its hard to make heads or tails of anything, but more importantly it illustrates the hard truth about insanity: there is no escape, there is no respite. Watching this show I find myself, along with Will, constantly just pinching myself, hoping to wake up and make it all go away.

This blurring of reality isn’t done all at once, however. As the first season progresses, Will’s sanity is slowly and methodically brought into question- through episodic experiences with monsters-of-the-week and further exploring the pilot’s traumatic moment, we are presented with one of the most concise and well-serialized story-arcs I have ever watched in a thirteen-episode season of television. You could easily plot each of the thirteen on a line graph and watch the slow, steady incline (or decline, depending on how you look at it) of Will’s “insanity”. Not only does it give Will really organic character development, but also it allows for this show to exist in its own creepy world that was created just for Hannibal. Each episode exists in a demented snow globe world. In this world the people with smiles and open hands are the ones most likely to chop you up and eat you, while the ones with sad, sullen looks are often there to help (because if you were a good person and existed in there, wouldn’t you be sad?). Blood and gore are constants in this world; they are the snowflakes that fill up the globe every time you shake it. Worst of all- there is no karmic justice in this world: if you kill and cover up your tracks, no one will find you; if you want to stop a killer, you better bring a gun, not handcuffs. You can flip to any episode of Hannibal and you will be instantly transported to this world, and that, especially on television, is a very hard thing to do. Telling a drawn out story the way television does usually requires shifts in narrative style (caused intentionally or by different-styled directors behind the camera) in order to really dig into the details of a season-long plot line. This is one of the most underrated aspects of what made Breaking Bad so amazing- the world and the characters that existed in were so well thought out and always so static, they existed perfectly in their Albuquerque snow globe, with blue meth as their snow.

With its world and characters so well defined, Hannibal gains the freedom to really experiment with the story telling. This show is so ambiguous that it forces us to constantly ask ourselves BIG picture questions that deride everything you think is important about the show but actually is not at all: Is Will even insane? Or is someone pulling just the right strings to make it look like he is? Then in between the big statements and moments, they allow themselves to fill in the gaps with very subtle imagery and foreshowing that takes three or four watch throughs to really appreciate and catch. I am so surprised this show doesn’t have a bigger following: aside from the blood-curdling effect this show has on you, it’s also one of the best-produced shows I’ve seen anywhere in this last few years. It should be regarded and talked about in the same way as Breaking Bad or House of Cards but unfortunately continues to be overlooked.

Watching Hannibal forces me to question my sanity on a disturbingly consistent basis. It requires me to embrace the gaping void of fear and stare at something so dark that I am forced to see aspects of myself in it. Watching Hannibal fills me with madness, confusion and the distinct feeling that I am losing my mind. I recommend this feeling to anyone who identifies as a human being and wishes to know more about what that really means.